Asus Ally

It is interesting that this could actually be a SteamDeck competitor...

or what'd be cooler is it could actually be another platform that supports SteamDeck OS and is fully validated by Valve.

By far the most important feature of the SteamDeck is that Valve validates/profiles supported games against the SteamDeck hardware and SteamDeck OS.

As a consumer I can be assured the game I am purchasing will likely not have graphics card issues, driver bugs, etc. as Valve QA testers/other SteamDeck users will likely have experienced similar issues before me and Value will likely have already solved these issues - either by modifying the SteamDeck OS or working with the game creator.

Valve/SteamDeck OS would be more like Google/Android OS with Valve validating the OS/apps/games against HW offerings by multiple HW vendors.

The original SteamDeck would be more like a Pixel device - basically a reference HW platform to get the ball rolling.

My experience with Asus products is that they use cheap vital components and thus result in a lot of future cost. This has been corroborated by multiple computer repair technicians independently of each other.

Also... that is hideous.

I hate so sound so shallow, but that is a factor for portable devices, and much of the Zephyrus linup is more understated and less Decepticon.

Asus is usually one of the first out with new AMD APUs, so it makes sense that they would snag Phoenix so early.

They really took docking to its logical extreme with that laptop spec 4090 egpu, didn't they.